feeder calves

[rkaiser]

Kato says - "Don't blame the breed, blame the breeder."

Excellent Kato

Sean says - "reproduction is 5 times more important than growth and 10 times more important than carcass merit to total profitability. In other words, small heritability, but small changes can have big effects on bottom line profitability."

Plase take this statement to your old A.I. instructor cowman.

[grassfarmer]

Semen testing is a very limited way of assessing a bull's fertility. It can give you a % live semen but that gives no guide as to how well (or even if) he will settle cows. Capacity to work and breed cows is a totally different thing. I admit I've had my fill of Charolais - turned three good bulls out with 82 cows last year and after 10 days was down to one working bull - 2 lame, 1 as a result of fighting. Got a replacement in - by which time the sound bull had gone lame but one of his buddies had recovered enough to get by. End result a lot of hassle and expense and 10% open cows. This is pretty much the norm for Charolais and most of the other popular breeds in my area from what I hear. I heard of one guy that had eventually needed 9 bulls taken to his pasture to breed 120 cows! By my standards 3 bulls to 80 cows is overkill - Yearling Luing bulls will cover 30 cows and mature bulls will cover 45-55 cows in range conditions and will settle them in the first cycle if the cows are cycling. That is the Luing breed standard because the breed was built with fertility as it's no 1 priority. 98% conception in cows was the target and this was met and recorded way back in the early 1970s. Yet today seedstock breeders and vets in Canada say you need one mature bull per 30 cows, some even suggest upping it to 1/25 cows - I say it depends on the bull. If we select prepotent,vigorous masculine bulls of any breed we might get away from these problems. Unfortunately most seedstock producers are breeding paper cattle - picking big EPD numbers and breeding rubbish with no consistancy and no chance of imprinting their type on their offspring. The trend for "outcross"
genetics in pure breeds plays a big part but results in cattle that are no more consistant than F1's. Mongrelising among all breeds to turn them black hasn't helped - how can you expect that big black Simmy bull you just bought to imprint Simmental type on your herd when his granny was an Angus? Add that to chronic overfeeding of young bulls and then basing bull selection on results achieved under that feedlot ration and it's little wonder we are seeing so many bulls that can't breed cows under range conditions and then leave offspring that can perform on barley. Perhaps it might be smarter to just ring these bulls and keep them in the feedlot and select some real bulls from elsewhere?

[cowman]

Well that is very interesting.
Especially the part about reproduction being 5 times as important as growth and ten times as important as carcass? But wait a minute fertility is a very low odds fertility trait, isn't it? In fact isn't poor fertility usually attributed to poor management? Of how the bull was raised, how he was selected for testicles, viable sperm etc.? Or is that not right?
And also don't the "experts" claim the F1 female has better fertility through heterosis? Would that also apply to the F1 bull?
And here that darned old AI instructor was just telling me that stuff so he could sell me some darned terminal breed semen! Hey wait a minute...the only semen I ever bought off him was Sim, Hereford and Red Angus! Does that mean they are terminal crosses now? Why didn't someone tell me?
grassfarmer: I don't know why your Charlais bulls were duds? Do you think the lameness thing could be due to the fact they were fed too hard as youngsters? Do Charlais bulls have a tendency to fight more than other breeds? Do Luing bulls not fight...or do they discuss things like gentlemen?
It must be those darned Charlais breeders selecting for fighting bulls!

[cowman]

Call me eccentric but somehow reading this post has inspired me to send this little ditty:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
adder's fork, and blind-worms sting,
lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth, BOIL and BUBBLE!

[rkaiser]

Call whatever you like witchcraft cowman, but the statement that your A.I. instructor supposedly made is more like dumbasscraft.

Here are your words for review.

Cowdummy says -"Now I'm sure you boys will enlighten me, but my old AI instructor always told me fertility is a very low trait to select for?"

This guy had to be selling terminal semen to you cowman or he hoped that you would get out of the cow business sometime down the road. Don't tell us that you did not choose the homesteader bulls with some nuts, that you kept to follow up this A.I program you had going.

Fertility is one of the most important traits to consider when buying or choosing a bull, and you darn well know it. Just looking to stir that cauldren like usual aren't you cowdummy.

[kato]

It's true that the semen test is only the first part of it. If you look at the semen test form you will see that observation at home is the second part of the test. Even if the bull looks like he's breeding well, if he has no ammunition it ain't going to do much good.

They need to be top notch in both quality of semen and behaviour to be considered dependable.

If someone is having trouble with their Charolais bulls, I'd find a new breeder. We've had lots of good Charolais over the years that handled a lot of cows, and stayed sound. Management when young is the secret to having a bull with longevity. If you buy a bull that's been pushed too hard he's just not going to last.

Working at a vet clinic, I have seen the result of lots of wrecks involving bulls that didn't breed. Some of these are incredibly expensive. Most are the result of a lack of observation in the breeding season, and people assuming that because the bull was good last year, he's still good. We've seen bulls come in that looked like a million bucks, and produced zero sperm. Things happen, and lots of times they don't show up visually. A bull can have a fever, or an infection, and completely ruin his semen count, and not look one bit different. We've seen more than one perfectly fine looking bull come in and give a sample that's pure pus. You can't spot that without a semen test, and infections show no preference for one breed over another.

We're also firm believers in having extra bulls around. We never put just one bull in a pasture, no matter what the number of cows is. An extra yearling is cheap insurance.

[grassfarmer]

Suggested reading Cowman,
Anything by Gearld Fry, Jan Bonsma, Denis Cadzow for starters. Knowledge is power - maybe you could eventually even give up that part time oil patch job that gets you up at ungodly hours and become a real "cowman"

[kato]

It's starting to sound like Ranchers.net around here! LOL Let's take a closer look at cowman's apparently outrageous statement.

"Now I'm sure you boys will enlighten me, but my old AI instructor always told me fertility is a very low trait to select for?"

As far as commercially bought AI semen goes, I don't remember fertility beyond the ability to freeze being a criteria, so I can see the AI instructor not being all wound up about it. The product he deals with is pretty standardized.

"He further went on to state that most fertility problems were a management problem not a genetic problem?"

"Most" may not the the best word, but all the fertility in the world won't help if the management isn't there.

"And he concluded: Select for the traits that can be approved genetically and manage the ones that can't!"

That doesn't sound like such bad advice to me.

[kato]

It does seem that there are a few cheap shots being taken at cowman. For one thing, if he chooses to get up in the middle of the night to operate an oil patch related business it certainly doesn't make him any less of a 'cowman'.
Some of the best cattle producers I know have been involved in other ventures, mainly to keep the darn cattle operation going without taking on a huge debt load.

[grassfarmer]

"He further went on to state that most fertility problems were a management problem not a genetic problem?"

This to me indicates the current mindset of most in the beef industry and I think it is a fallacy. It's a creation of pseudo experts and seedstock breeders trying to pass off inferior stock to commercial buyers. Heterosis or "hybrid vigour" has no place in seedstock operations as it is a one time wonder that destroys prepotency for characteristics. Buying a bull that excels in a particular trait won't do you much good if he a hybrid or an outcross pedigree animal because he won't stamp the trait on his progeny as he has a high level of heterosis. To be able to sire progeny that are like peas in a pod, like the sire takes a bull with prepotency - by implication homozygous.
It saddens me to see the expertise of the genetic masterminds of previous generations, the people who created our great breeds, being lost by modern breeders in their race to breed paper cattle built on dubious numbers.
A statistic I read recently showed that in 1950s America 75% of fat cattle graded choice or better - today that figure is closer to 30%.